Once Steve Nash gets done with this whole basketball thing, he has let it be known that he’d like to join the pantheon of great Canadian filmmakers, like, um … Judd Apatow! and, uh… Paul Haggis! In fact, he’s already gotten his start, as reports THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC, producing a Nike ad that is somehow not really an ad.

Nash produced the 81-second piece and is the first Nike major sports athlete to do so (skateboarding and BMX athletes get similarly involved). Nash wrote it, pitched it, hired the director (Lola Schmabel) and produced his first piece on a $30,000 budget during his stay in New York City last summer.

It is titled “Training Day” (the title and his name can lead you to it on youtube.com). It is a slice of a Nash day in New York. That includes skateboarding by the Brooklyn Bridge or on Wall Street as he turns heads. It shows him playing soccer on the roof of Pier 40 or in Chinatown, where he captured an elderly man’s pose.

The commercial does not hawk a product. Nike’s swoosh is not obvious until the closing shot of Nash lying on the 54th floor of the new 7 World Trade Center building.

Oh really? It’s a commercial and it doesn’t hawk a product? Seems like a contradiction of terms, if you ask me.

If you show a corporate logo, you’re advertising a brand. You don’t necessarily need to be holding a shoe aloft. But, hey, it’s got an opening image of him as a 3-year-old kicking a soccer ball. That’s sacrificing yourself to your art.